Universal seems to have rather stupidly brought its legal attack dogs out, these large companies never seem to understand living in the "real" world.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080428-universal-eff-slapped-us-with-dancing-toddler-dmca-lawsuit.htmlCalifornia is one of the states with its own anti-SLAPP law, designed to prevent the powerful from filing a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation—in other words, to stop them from suing critics. The anti-SLAPP statute allows critics to get such cases tossed out of court quickly, and it allows the target of the lawsuit to sue in return. The law is generally invoked by corporate critics, but in the last year we've seen it used several times by the major media companies themselves, which claim they are being prevented from exercising their legitimate public rights. Universal, in fact, is currently arguing that the EFF—a big supporter of anti-SLAPP laws—is itself running afoul of those laws. In fact, Universal is actually the victim here of "an ongoing campaign by the Electronic Frontier Foundation to deter copyright holders from protecting their rights."
The federal judge in the case ruled this month that "it is not clear that Universals free speech rights were violated." He also said that Universals speech rights didn't deserve SLAPP protection "simply because Lenz appeared on television to discuss her case and wrote about her case on her blog."
Companies like Universal hardly seem in danger of having their rights tramped by a toddler-taping mom who appears on TV, but the company isn't the only one to claim that the EFF is attempting to "SLAPP it down." Verizon made the same case in May 2007 when the EFF and ACLU sued the company to learn more about any phone records it turned over to the US National Security Agency for analysis. In that case, Verizon claimed that the suit was a SLAPP designed to keep it from exercising its First Amendment right to turn over customer calling information to government security services.
When I read cases like this I can hear James Browns "living in America" playing in my mind, these cases would be tossed out as a waste of time anywhere else I'm sure, get a life universal :roll:
